The Vampire Diaries 4.05 “The Killer”

Calm down, fanboys and girls. Spectre of a cure or not, no way this show was going to let Elena be the one vampire who never killed. She’s had blood dripping from her lips in every episode this season; she wasn’t going to get off the hook that easily. Doppelganger Katherine is a symbol of her ruthless potential, and she’s about to finally make her appearance next week!

Think of it this way. Elena finally has the strength to protect herself. Alaric’s training hasn’t been forgotten; she can fight back against the beings who threaten her now, regardless of age, regardless of gender. Caroline certainly picked up the knack of using her abilities quickly, and there’s no reason Elena can’t, too.

I don’t really like hostage scenarios, so Connor’s grand stand this issue is more interesting for how little he knows about how Mystic Falls works. I don’t really get much out of Connor’s reckless and flagrant antagonizing of the vampire cadre in Mystic Falls. His drive to kill vamps seems more instinctual than carefully planned, and of course he turns out to have been just the season’s little bad after all. We should have known that, when he sifted through the wreckage of the minister’s self-immolation, and hid the information intended for the orphaned daughter about worse things to come.

And we really should know now that we’ve seen Bonnie’s new professor friend give him his marching orders. Nefarious plots are underfoot, and we’re nowhere near to uncovering them yet. Connor’s anti-vampire motivation turned out to be pretty lame; he’s killing them not for some personal vengeance vendetta, but because when he does his treasure map tattoo spontaneously grows. And now that he’s gone, he’s somehow passed it on to Jeremy, who isn’t about to go on a vampire-killing rampage. It clearly means much more than Connor ever imagined. As a vampire-hunter with a vengeance, he’s no Gunn.

Elena’s passions are still overwhelming her, so she wants to immediately run to Matt, Jeremy and April’s rescue. So does Damon, but he feels a little more confidently lethal than Elena has yet shown. Stefan stalls them, trying to do Klaus’ bidding, which is pretty dumb and selfish of Stefan (he wants the cure to save Elena from staying a vamp). As Damon rightly points out, he would have helped either way; he loves Elena as a vamp or a human, but he’d do it just for Stefan. Very sweet, but Stefan should have known that. Instead he gets stuck in romantic superhero mode too often.

So when Elena finally does stage her rescue, she’s tricky, she’s in control of her super-speed, and she tries to spare Connor until he tries to kill her. Again. He’s pretty much got one note. Then she puts him down.

And that’s it; Elena’s now a killer, too. It’s not like she didn’t try staking evil vamps on more than one occasion, or helping Vamp Mommy try to kill all her original offspring that one time. Until she learned that Stefan and Damon would likely die, too.

Will they or won’t they find a cure? How can that be as important as which Salvatore brother Elena is currently asking for aid? Or as important as what trap witch Bonnie is currently falling into? Or as important as how Jeremy and Matt will play into whatever Little Orphan April’s purpose is? Not very much, we’ve got bigger things to worry about. My only hope is that some of them are bad enough to finally kill off Klaus.